Your "Issues" Are In Your Tissues

Your "Issues" Are In Your Tissues

*This Blog is in rough draft form, and will be fleshed out in the near future.  Check back regularly for additional information and further insights into this topic. (It might expedite the development process if you email me and express interest in understanding more about the topic).

--ROUGH DRAFT NOTES--

• This blog's title comes from a paraphrasing of something a psychologist-friend of my older brother's once explained to him.  As he explained the relationship of Massage Therapy and related Bodywork modalities with his work as a Psycho Therapist, he employed a great alliteration when he revealed, "the issues are in your tissues."
 
 
• The psycho-somatic forces that "turn-on" people's tension. 
 
• Psycho = Psyche, one's mind
• Somatic = Soma, one's body
• Brain doesn't know difference between reality and fantasy.  The primal brain's Survival Senses, or, "Fight-Flight-or-Freeze" Instincts, are triggered by perceptions.  Those perceptions, or psychological interpretations of life events/experiences--whether real or imagined--have the physiological effect of releasing hormones into the bloodstream that circulate throughout the body, and "excite" a variety of tissues to action--including your muscles. 
• Behaviorally, this translates into an enhanced ability to "fight", or work harder or stronger; to "flight"--or, to correct the tense, "flee"--or run away from someone or something that seems too overwhelming to confront; or: to "freeze"--to literally lock up one's neuromuscular system and brace one's bodily-being to either accept one's impending doom, or potentially pacify a predator's fascination by essentially "playing dead".
• Remember: it takes seconds to trigger your body's Fight-Flight-or-Freeze response; but it can take hours--even days, months or years--to shake off the tempestuous energy triggered by a traumatic experience. 
• The STRONGER the emotion elicted by a traumatic experience, the DEEPER the memory impress within the body's neuro-circuitry.  In other words, the greater the emotion attached to a traumatic event (same is true of happiness-producing events), the  more potently the neurological electrical signal is etched into the sinews of your body's nerve tissue.  This is why flashbacks can provoke all the same thoughts, feelings, and behavioral reactions as the actual event when it happened.
• To effectively cope, we must learn to disassociate from events, not from our physical reactions to those events. 
• Otherwise, we become Victims of Trauma, rather than Victors of Trauma
 
 
• Control vs Freedom Driving Thought Processes
• Festival of Trees Client Neck Loosening Experience
• Yoga = Yoking = Uniting Mind & Body
• Rob VanDenBerge's Neck Release Experience
• Deep Breathing, yawned at just the right moment (he wasn't sure just what he had done either).  The instantaneous transformation from Frozen to Fluid state of the tissue was undeniably "black and white".  It wasn't just a little, it was complete. (and he even had a really hard time going back to work afterwards, because he was SO relaxed. I mention this here, because, a lot of us are afraid to let go of our tensions, because it actually holds us together, keeps us going strong.  Finding the the ever elusive "balance" is the key.  )
 
• 2-Hr Medical Massage, 45-min on neck--from frozen ice to fluid water, 1-hr later  returned to neck, frozen ice again, 5-min discussion of similarities in our controling personalities (I'm not exempt from any of this stuff--that's why I understand it so well!), mental shift transpired, complete return to fluidity in 5-min w/NO additional work by me (but definitely by her, in her mind)

• Triggering The Transformation -- Suggested Paradigm Shifts:

  Can you think of two or three areas in your life where you could exert less control and promote more freedom?

• Letting Go: Harboring Hatred, Failure to Forgive

• Our Beliefs Are At The Origin Of ALL Our Issues

Suggested Reading for Further Information:

• Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body, Peter A. Levine
• (comes with CD of practical, easy, well-conceived exercises)
• Awaking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter A. Levine
• (This book is actually the first of two, and is a good read, but very painstaking and long.  The first book is short and sweet.  Both are very worthwhile reads, as Levine is the first that I'm aware of, to actually describe the mechanics involved in one's energy field in emotional trauma, and provides potent visual aids for clear comprehension.  )
• The Power of the Subconscious Mind, Joseph Murphy
• Focusing
• Remembering Wholeness
• Light In The Wilderness
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

--ROUGH DRAFT NOTES--